Personal Computer Television (PCTV) is a technique that allows a computer to be used as a television, e.g., to accept and display signals from an antenna, Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), camcorder, or the like. Current PCTV solutions usually contain three parts: a Radio Frequency (RF) tuner, a demodulator, and an interface to the Personal Computer (PC). The RF tuner selects one channel out of a plurality of channels from an input, such as an antenna input or cable input. The demodulator converts the single channel data from the tuner to a raw data output, usually baseband. The PC interface, or bridge, transports the raw data to the PC for the intended use.
Typically, the tuner, demodulator, and interface are included in an external system that feeds into a data bus for the computer. In that architecture, a hardware unit demodulates the data from the channel. Since the demodulator is hardware-based, its functionality is fixed. Typically, there is a lot of die area and cost involved with making a hardware demodulator, especially considering that most PCs have enough processing power to perform demodulation.
Thus, some solutions have included a tuner and a PC interface in an external unit and employed a software-based demodulator running on the PC. A disadvantage of some of those solutions is that they tend to be bulky and large, even in spite of the fact that the demodulator is software-based.
There is currently no solution available that provides an efficient distribution of signal processing functionality, while at the same time providing a convenient package that can be used with a variety of computers, such as laptops, cable modems, and the like.